May 22, 2013 — Remapping Debate has scoured several years worth of Securities and Exchange Commission filings to create easy-to-use visualizations of independent director pay at the top 10 financial companies by assets and the top 40 non-financial companies by assets (all according to Forbes). We refer to these companies collectively as the "top 50."
Independent directors are those directors who, aside from sitting on a company's board of directors and getting paid for doing so, have no material interest in and hold no position at the company.
Be sure to look at all three pages of visualizations: we provide not only median and highest independent director pay for each available year since 2006, but also show change over time (page 2), and provide individual independent director pay and other information (page 3).
On this page, companies can be ranked in terms of either median or highest independent director compensation, and data on an individual company is displayed when you select that company. Scroll over a bar to get the relevant number rounded to the nearest $1,000.
In 2012, Google had the highest median independent director pay ($418,856) as well the highest independent director pay ($1,177,384). The median independent director pay was at least $200,000 at 46 of the top 50 companies. The highest independent director pay was at least $400,000 at 12 of the top 50.
Note: the vertical scale (in thousands of dollars) changes for each company selected. Thus, one can visually assess change over time and pay for a single company by studying the chart, but one should not make an assessment between and among companies by comparing the size of the data bars.
Click here for important additional notes.
The visualization on this page allows you to see, at a glance, change over time in independent director pay at the top 50 companies. The visualization can be sorted by percentage change in median independent director pay, percentage change in highest independent director pay, or simply alphabetically by company.
There was a large range in the change reflected between the first year of data available (generally 2006) and the last year available (2012). Median independent director pay went up as much as 208.3 percent (at American Capital Agency) and down as much as 44.1 percent (at Google). Overall, 37 of the top 50 showed increases over time and 13 showed decreases.
Highest independent director pay went up as much as 207.7 percent (at Coca-Cola) and down as much as 49.1 percent (at Bank of America). Overall, 31 of the top 50 showed increases over time and 19 showed decreases.
The visualization below drills down to enable you to explore the compensation over time of each independent director of each of the top 50 firms. When you select a company and director, you will also see whether the director serves or has served as an independent director for any other top 50 firm during all or any part of his or her term, or prior thereto, with the company selected.
Finally, the visualization will display other "affiliations" of the independent director. We use the term affiliation to refer to an entity at which an independent director held a position either during some or all of his or her tenure as an independent director, or prior thereto, excluding independent directorships at other companies (other than that of an independent director serving as chair of a corporate board of directors).
For 2012, the following entities were those with which independent directors at the most top 50 companies had "affiliations": Stanford University (10 companies); General Electric (9); Harvard Business School (7); Bank of America (6); Boeing (6); Deloitte LLP (6); Ernst & Young LLP (6); and U.S. House of Representatives (6).
